The medal count: U.S., China creating 'parallel Olympics'

BEIJING -- U.S. athletes are doing well in the sports their country traditionally cares about.

Chinese athletes are doing well in the sports their country traditionally cares about, plus some in which they have created instant tradition based on success.

“What we have here is a parallel Olympics,” said David Wallechinsky, author of “The Complete Book of the Olympics.”

“We in the United States are focused on swimming, track and field and basketball, and we hardly notice that China just won five gold medals in sports like badminton, shooting and women’s weightlifting.”

While pool swimming (as opposed to open water) and track have by far the most medals at stake, U.S. dominance there likely will not be enough to keep China from topping the gold medal count.

“A lot of people are saying China is traditionally not as strong in the second week, but traditionally they don’t win xx gold medals in the first week,” said Steve Roush, chief of sports performance for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“I’m not sure tradition is the best predictor of the future where China is concerned.”

China led 35-19 in the gold medal tally after Sunday’s action, the final day of pool swimming, in which the U.S. won 12 of 32 golds and China just one.

It is no surprise that Chinese media are among many worldwide that list the medal standings by gold rather than total medals, where the United States leads 65-61.

Roush and other USOC officials long had predicted that China would have exceptional results based on its Project 119, which identified 119 potential medal events and focused time and money on them.

“For the non-believers, it is reality that the Chinese investment over the past six or seven years has proved to be successful in events where they typically had not succeeded on the international level,” Roush said.

While U.S. athletes should win several gold medals in team sports that end later this week, their only hope to surpass China depends on doing better in track and field than seems reasonably possible — especially after failing to win the men’s shotput and both the men’s and women’s 100-meter dash.

An everything-goes-right view would have the United States winning 31 gold medals in the second week of the Olympics, which would make the total 48, or a whopping 12 more than the total four years ago in Athens.

China won 32 golds in Athens. While many sports they have dominated here are over, the Chinese should add to their current total with three more golds in table tennis, three more in diving, and one or more in boxing and gymnastics, with others possible in canoe-kayak and track and field.

These are possible places for the United States to add to its gold total.

Beach volleyball, two; baseball, one (unlikely); basketball, two (expected); BMX cycling, one; gymnastics, two; equestrian, one; sailing, one; soccer, one; softball, one (expected); taekwondo, one; volleyball, one; and water polo, one.

The United States has a shot at 16 gold medals in track and field, but its athletes are favored for only seven: men’s and women’s 400 meters, women’s 200, men’s 400 hurdles, decathlon and both 1,600-meter relays.

“Our Olympic team is performing well,” Roush insisted. “This isn’t a matter of the United States losing the gold medal count but of China stepping up and winning it.”

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Lin Dan of China during the men's gold medal match in badminton. Lin won. Credit: Indranil Mukherjee / AFP / Getty Images

Comments

[Chris]

Your comment "It is no surprise that Chinese media are among many worldwide who list the medal standings by gold rather than total medals, where the United States leads 65-61." is totally misleading. It is International Olympic Committe policy to rank the medal table according to the number of gold medals won. As a proof of this i would like to refer to the official medal table of the Athens Olympics: China came in second with 32 gold and 63 medals in total while Russia was below them in third spot with 27 gold and with 92 medals all up. Ten minutes research verified the outlined statement was a misrepresentation of the accepted system. Changing the way that the medal tally is presented internationally to mislead the readership is poor journalism. Lift your game Philip

[Johnson]

Please don't say bronze equals gold. What do you think if Phelps get eight bronze?

[David]

What do you get if you adding/mixing all the elements of Gold + Silver + Bronze ?
= Pretending your are the winner. LOL... Come on, get real!

[Jerry]

If you are under 16 years of age you may watch the Olympics, but you may not participate.

[Pierre]

Steve Roush said "they don't win xx gold medals in the first week". "xx gold medals"? O RLY?

[ilt]

Looking at government investment doesn't really work, unless you factor in the GDP. For example, the US can afford not to invest much from a governmental standpoint because its population is wealthy enough for most families to finance their children's participation in sports. On the other hand, in a country like China, despite having a much larger population, a large portion of the population is still extremely poor (keep in mind that 8 years ago, the per capita gdp of China was still approximately 800 USD). You can't really compare...

[Perplexed Brit]

Yeah - where did all those swimming events come from anyway? You've seen one obscure variation on an obscure theme, you've seen them all...

If the event count in some of the other sports (cycling, rowing, sailing...) was the same as that for the swimming, the whole medal table would be skewed to the OTHER side of the Atlantic...

Not really concerned over here though - just as long as we stay ahead of the Australians !!

[Tim Turner]

And if it's not enough to count second and third places so that America does better than China, then will you start including fourths and fifths? Silver just means you didn't come first. America started the "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser" rubbish; so let's paraphrase. Show me a bad loser, and I'll show you an american loser.

[Robert Adanto]

By 2012 China will begin to do very well or perhaps even dominate events such as boxing, basketball and swimming, traditional areas of US success. The Chinese have imported coaches and adopted methods via globalization they had never had access to before in the past, and the sky is the limit for this emerging superpower. I wonder if they've also made a committment to winter sports as well. For all the attention given to the great Chinese fire-wall, these games have been truly exceptional. One has to wonder where we'd be if we didn't have Michael Phelps.

[KAra]

I don't know America, how about using the medal table calculations that the IOC and majority of competing nations use, instead of the one which puts you at the top of the ranking.
Now if the USA had more Gold medals than the Chinese it would be interesting to see which medal ranking they used?

[Shania]

I just thought it's rather silly to rank by medal counts. If gold, silver and bronze are all the same, then the podum would be flat.

[Ned Nelson]

China is a nation to be reckoned with, I think for sure they will be a super power like never before-- goodbye good olde USA

[Lat]

ehm
in the rest of the world the medal count is order by gold,silver,bronze not by "total"

http://tinyurl.com/5gnntm

[Andrew Stafford]

This was always going to happen if you looked at the Chinese medal progression over the last 3 olympics, and then factored in that they automatically qualified for all sports as the hosts. In 2012, I think they will top the medal tally again. The Chinese are a fiercly proud and determined people, and have a singular focus all the way from the president down to joe bloggs to top the medal table.

[susan smith]

An olympic bronze isn't a gold medal...

What a poorly written article!

[Heindrich]

Haha... Americans are such bad losers, only USA media sources rank by total medals. Perhaps the fairest method is to value medals by points... 3 for gold, 2 for silver and 1 for bronze. If you do that... China still tops it easily.

[Adrian Bayer]

I would counter the above poster, and use this system of scoring medals is more logical and less saying someone is a poor journalist.

3 points for a gold
2 points for a silver
1 point for a bronze.

So a snapshot of right now USA 22 Gold, 24 Silver, 26 Bronze for a total of 72 medals.
22gold X 3=66 24silver X 2=48 26bronze X 1=26
For a grand total of 140 points.

And China 39 gold, 14 silver, 14 bronze for a total of 57 medals.

39gold X3=117 14silver X 2=28 14bronze X1= 14
For a grand total of 159 points.

China (159 points) would be leading the USA (140 points) at this point of the olympics.

This scoring system makes the most sense to me, and then could cut out posts of mean posters.

[Frank]

I'm surprised (or perhaps I'm just ignorant) that nobody came up with a simple weighting system or the medals e.g. 3 points for gold, 2 points for silver and 1 for bronze. Given the current standings:

G S B Total
China 39 14 14 67
United States 22 24 26 72

applying the formula above should yield this:

G S B Total Points
China 39 14 14 159
United States 22 24 26 140

with China leading. I think this is the fairest method as just counting golds slight the achievements of the 2nd/3rd place winners, who after all are also medal winners, not does lumping all medals together make sense (if so, we should have Obama and McCain as joint presidents?)

[Alex]

Typical !!!

If the USA were winning more GOLD than OVERALL then for sure they would be displaying the Medals Table differently.

Just to note if Phelps hadnt won 8 golds (which IMHO devalues the swimming competition) then the USA would only have 14 GOLDS, just 2 more than Great Britain.

Just goes to show how poorly the USA is doing.

[T1NA]

Why is it ONLY about ATHLETES winning medals??? Is it because of the multi-million advertising ($$$) in endorsments that will follow since "MONEY makes the World go round"??? The Olympic motto has always been about the joy of athletes to participate in celebration of HUMANITY -- without the use of any performance-enhancing ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES, which is, obviously, the BIG SECRET (...hush-hush) of Olympians nowadays. For one, I would have liked to see Phelps-FLOP or Bolt-JOLT.

[Russell]

What a load of rubbish, seriously!! This article is so pro American anti Chinese its verging on xenophobia...oh i forgot, you sir are American, then it comes as no surprise. As Chris commented, the olympic games are ranked by total gold medals as opposed to total overall medals, this is the way it has always been done. I for one am pleased to see China, the up and coming superpower of the world challenging the United States and probably coming out on top. It shakes things up, makes it a little bit more interesting than the U.S. dominating as has happened in previous years, which to be honest is a bit of a bore.

I'm afraid Philip that you also try to make it sound as if the sports China has had success in don't really matter, as if they have been thrown in to give the countries like China a better chance of defeating the U.S. What about basketball and baseball??? The U.S. national games. We over here in Europe hardly know the rules, let alone have any chance of success in such sports.

Lastly I would like to add that the tone of this article really comes as no suprise. The media of the U.S. always seem to put a pro U.S. spin on everything I have ever had the misfortune of reading. The worse thing about this is the people of the U.S. are so blind to it and tend to act accordingly, really, its embarassing to witness. Roll on the day America fails!

[TrueFan1947]

With 5 times the population of the USA, China SHOULD have proportionally more medals, period.

[Metric System]

Was curious about the two counting systems so did a quick browse through the leading newspapers of some major countries. The US is the only country I found using the total medal count. The ones using the non-US system are UK (the Guardian), France (La Liberation), Japan (Asahi Shimbun), Germany (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Spain (El Pais), Canada (Globe and Mail), and of course China (People's Daily). I don't read any Russian but would like to find out.

It's just like the metric system.

[deangelo]

Who goes to the Olympics looking for silver or bronze? Its all about the gold.
how many excuses does Team USA going to make to make their fans feel better? So sad.

[synergymus]

to ilt:
I disagree with you completely from my discussion with my chinese colleges the biggest difference is the huge funding of sports through our public K-12 schools and Colleges and University. Swimming for example. Most Middle and High Schools have swim teams in the US in addition there are public pools all of the place. There are almost no pools in china and swimming is not available to K-12 kids whatsoever!!!